[time-nuts] OT, looking for a good science forum

Chris Albertson albertson.chris at gmail.com
Sat Jan 26 17:14:39 EST 2013


On Sat, Jan 26, 2013 at 1:46 PM, J. Forster <jfor at quikus.com> wrote:
> The microscope group can help with reccomendations. 1000x is really
> pushing it, because of 'empty magnification'.
>

1000x is the "standard".  Almost every microscope in a biology lab
will have a 100x oil immersion objective and a 10x eyepiece.   And
then also have two or three lower power objectives as well.

If you were to try and get 1000x from a 40x objective or if the
optical quality were poor, yes, then you are just getting big, blurry
images with no more detai than you'd see at 400x.   That is what you
call "empty magnification" and it is.

It turns out that 1000x is about the limit of light microscopes and
you pretty much need that if the goal is to see structures inside a
cell, rather then just the cell's outline.  You need to use oil that
has about the same refractive index as the glass cover slide.   In
high school level labs they use cheaper 400x scopes and just look at
larger stuff.


Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California


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